Faith
by Agent-G
Summary: Set in my AGU series during the Adjustments timeline. Vince has a crisis of faith and Kurt tries to help him.


**DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN X-MEN: EVOLUTION OR ANYTHING FROM MARVEL, ANY OCs ARE MINE.**

**IMPORTANT:**

**FOR ANY NEW PEOPLE THIS IS PART OF MY AGU SERIES AND TAKES PLACE SOMEWHERE ALONG THE LINES OF THE ADJUSTMENTS TIMELINE. ALSO IF ANYONE EVER WANTS TO USE ANY OCs OF MINE OR STORY IDEAS PLEASE LET ME KNOW, CHANCES ARE I'LL SAY YES.**

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**FAITH**

Several of the kids were in the living room watching a Monty Python film the Meaning of Life. Currently there was Rogue, Dani, Bobby with Jubilee sitting next to him, Amara and Kurt on the floor laughing it up. Vincent was also there sitting next to Rogue laughing as well. In fact it was the first time he managed to see this film.

It was going well until the live organ transplant segment. Amara was covering her eyes while the two medical men were cutting open the helpless man on the table as fake blood squirted out and he cried in agony as they removed his liver from him.

The reactions varied, mostly everyone was laughing...well except for one.

Kurt was the one to notice it. Vincent got a pale look on his face. He looked sickened by what he saw and looked on the edge of losing his lunch. "Hey man, are you alright?" He asked the slightly older boy.

Rogue turned to her boyfriend and knew right away someone was terribly wrong with him. "Vince what is it?" He didn't replay he just got up suddenly and quickly got out of the room. Everyone was stunned by what they saw. Rogue and Kurt shared a look and went after him, they found him by the stairs sitting on them holding his head in his hands, shaking slightly.

Both teens looked worried at him. Rogue sat down next to him and placed an arm over his shoulder. "Vincent, what's wrong?" She asked him getting a little scared at this.

"I...I don't like seeing stuff like that...it...it reminds me of some things I want to forget." He said weakly. Rogue nearly smacked herself in the head for forgetting. After she had absorbed him once a few months ago, she got all his memories and knew the kind of hell he was put through as a child, along with the other eleven children of the group he was part of. It had mostly faded now like most of the memories she got but she did know he had seen horrible things that he would never get over.

She knew he hated horror movies because he couldn't stand the gory details and the type of killing that went on. He wasn't afraid of blood, it was the types of violence used that really got to him. She remembered how he didn't sleep for a few days after seeing a Friday the 13th marathon.

She tried to remember the exact cause of this, but those memories were things she didn't like to think about, just like he didn't. But she had a good idea as to where it laid in his past. "Ah'm sorry ah should have warned ya about that part."

He looked up and her and smiled weakly for her benefit. "It's okay, I think I'll just head to my room for a bit." He slowly got up and so did she.

"Are ya alright?" She asked him. She smiled and nodded and walked off up the stairs. Rogue looked at him go and couldn't help but feel he was just saying that so she wouldn't worry.

"Is he really alright?" Kurt asked. He had decided to let Rogue handle this since she was closest to him.

Rogue was silent for a moment then turned sadly at Kurt. "Ah don't know."

In his room Vincent let the mask of his face fall. The smile and good humor was replaced instantly by one of grief, pain and sadness. After closing the door he slumped down next to his bed, he could still hear the screams in his head. The screams of the movie were now replaced by ones that had haunted his life and his nightmares for his entire life. He covered his ears in vain as he shut his eyes, hoping to try and block out the memories and the sounds.

They didn't go away, he tried to concentrate on something else, but the screams came back, the smell of blood followed and of burned flesh, and images of certain children he knew and had seen dying and others of solders ready to kill him. "Stop it, just stop it, go away." He silently pleaded. Tears were falling from his face now as he tried to use all the will power he had to send those memories back to the deepest corner of his mind.

It was at times like this that his photographic memory was a curse to him, he could never forget and the memories were just as fresh as the day they happened to him. He couldn't meditate when he was in a state like this and that usually helped him find his calm. After a little time he was able to force the memories aside at the moment.

He was still too upset to try and relax, the memories that threatened to resurface leaving a mark on his current thoughts. There was only one other thing he could think of at moments like this. Something someone dear to him, who had been like a father to him, had showed him what he could do at times like this.

He walked over to his desk and pulled open a drawer. There was a small wooden box in it. He slowly opened the box and pulled out a rosary. It was given to him when he was fourteen by Father Michaels, the man that raised him. He wrapped it around his right hand and knelt by his bed.

He put his fist wrapped up in the rosary to his forehead now bent down forward slightly and started to pray. It was the only other thing he knew that could fight off the horrible memories that he wished he could forget. He wanted to forget that place more then anything.

"God...why?" He silently asked. "Why did we have to suffer? Why us? We were just children...we didn't deserve it...did we?" They were questions he had asked his entire life. Ever since Father Michaels had taken him in and told him about God and religion, he had only one question.

Why?

It didn't seem fair or just, that children had to go through all of that. That those men who experimented on the kids were part of some grand plan...or was it that God just didn't care about him and the others? He didn't know. He wanted to know. He asked and prayed all the time for answers...but he never got them.

He heard sounds from the hall and he didn't want to take the chance of someone seeing him like this so he went out the window and flew out into the air. He landed on the roof and pulled his knees up to his chest and crossed his arms.

He looked to the heavens his eyes misty. "Please...why?" He silently pleaded. He didn't know how long he was up there, but he started to pry with every prayer he had learned and even said a few scriptures that usually helped him.

"Vince?" Came a worried voice. He was startled by it and looked to see a very concerned Kurt walking to him.

"What are you doing up here?" Vince asked trying to keep the pain out of his voice.

Kurt sat down next to him. "I like to come up there to think at times." He admitted. "Looks like you're doing the same."

"I think soul searching is more accurate." The Canadian boy admitted. There was a moment of silence between them before Vince started off. "Kurt...do you think God abandons some people?"

Kurt was surprised by this question. He knew a priest raised Vincent but he wouldn't have thought of him as someone that would think that. He sighed as the thought about it. "Vell...I've zought about zat myself...I mean look at me."

"Zere vere times I thought God abandoned me and didn't care, zat I vas alone and zat is vhy all ze things like ze other children running from me, people who saw me attacking me, even when they got me once and tried to burn me at ze stake."

This wasn't easy to admit to Kurt. He had faith in God and in his religion but there were times his faith was tested. "But zat would be wrong for me to blame all my problems on Him. Zat vould be the easy thing to do."

"Yeah I guess...but then there are times when I look at all the hate...all the pain and suffering." Vincent said to him. "Just...I don't know...I just want to know why there must be so much hate...so much pain in this world. Why the innocent have to suffer."

Kurt had no answer to that. He too had wondered why there was so much suffering in this world. He too had seen it and experienced it also. "I vish I knew." He said silently. "But life isn't all bad, zere is the good."

Vince looked out to the distance of the water nearby. "Yeah there is...but there are times...times when I think that they're too few."

Kurt nodded his head. "Ja, but zen zat's why we should treasure it."

Vincent thought about what Father Michaels had told him once. "We blame God when things go wrong and thank him for when things go right, but we ever thank him for the chance at life and for the opportunity to experience both the good and the bad that makes up life?"

Kurt tilted his head at that. Vince looked at him and a ghost of a smile was on his face. "Something someone once told me. He also said to me that it's through all the bad things that we learn what truly matters in life. That we would take for granted everything good given to use."

Kurt nodded his head. "Make sense to me. Besides if it was meant to happed it vould."

Vince scowled a little. "Kurt, I hate the idea of fate and destiny. That would mean there's no free will, that nothing we do matters at all and that our actions mean nothing, then what would be the point of heaven and hell if we were already assigned to go there? But then again I'm most likely already dammed."

Kurt's head turned sharply. "Vhy vould you say somezing like zat?"

"Kurt did you forget what I told you all? I killed seven people." He said weakly as the memory of that terrible day repeated once again in his mind.

Kurt placed a hand on his shoulder. "Vince...I don't believe zat you are damned as you said. You didn't mean to do it...it vas an accident and you know it and I can see zat you suffer because of it."

Kurt saw the haunted look on his face and sighed. He too knew what it was to feel pain from the past. There were still nights when he had nightmares of the villagers coming for him, tying him up and ready to burn him alive. The bottom of his feet still had faint traces of the burn scars there. He hadn't left his home for months too afraid to go out. He remembered how he had asked his father how God could let that happen to him. His father held him close and told him that God didn't cause those events, he was only there with you the entire time during it so you weren't alone in it.

He told Vince this and how ever since that day he always tried to believe in that.

He stared out to the distance thinking of Kurt's words. "You dad sounds like a nice guy."

Kurt smiled at that. "Ja he is." Then he remembered something he read once, it was something that he felt was truly got to the core of his being and had converted it to memory.

"For those who suffer,  
and those who cry this night,  
give them repose, Lord;  
a pause in their burdens.  
Let there be minutes  
where they experience peace,  
not of man  
but of angels.  
Love them, Lord,  
when others cannot.  
Hold them, Lord,  
when we fail with human arms.  
Hear their prayers  
and give them the ability to hear You back  
in whatever language they best understand." (1)

Vince looked at Kurt at the end of that. "That was nice...and something I wish would happen. I try so hard to put my past behind me, to forget it and bury it forever. To finally fine peace." He looked away then continued on. "I pray or meditate to try and find peace. Sometimes I find it for a little...but it doesn't stay as long as I'd like it."

Kurt nodded. "Ja...zere are days vhen I go and pray vhen I see all the suffering I see in our lives. Like when Amanda's parents house was burned down, vhen I zought that Mystique was killed as a statue, vhen the mansion was blown up, and so many ozher zings too."

"I guess that's were Faith comes in." Vincent said.

"Ja...when we need it ze most." Kurt agreed. They sat there in silence just watching the world. They were two different boys, grown up in different countries had lived different lives, yet they had so much in common. Both had been experimented on, both have had people turn on them call them freaks or monsters. Both held pain inside of them that would never go away.

But they also had one more thing in common.

Faith.

Faith that things would go on, and that things would get better and that they would never be alone in this world with their friends and loved ones always behind them. That no matter how hard life got, there would always be someone to be there with them, to help them get through the worst of it.

**THE END**

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1)Margaret A. Davidson  
© 1996 by Margaret A. Davidson, All Rights Reserved 


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